Memo EsparzaWorkProjectsEmail me

Product design and creative production

Memo is a designer working across product, web and brand. He thinks of design processes as facilitation, he starts by defining the problem together, stays hands on until it ships, and keeps it human the whole way.

Discover Collectives

Open Collective2026
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Expense Flow Mobile Steps

Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Expense Submission Mobile

A phone showing the first step of an expense submission flow: a step-dot progress row above the question of who money is being requested from, three recently used collectives as radio options with the first selected, an Other Collectives picker, and a Next button
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Expense UI

An expense detail card headed Monthly Invoice: a single line item for professional services at 5,000 dollars, and three panels beneath naming the collective and its balance, a lock-marked private payout address, and PayPal as the payout method
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Transactions Filters

Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Voice UI

2026
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

UI Component

2025
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Motion Brand

Late Checkout / Kable2024
  • Branding

Submit Expense - Flow

Open Collective2022
  • Product Design

Motion Brand

Late Checkout / Kable2024
  • Branding

Brandmark Motion

OSC2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

3D Brand Application

OSC2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Open Collective Website

A homepage hero inside browser chrome: a two-line headline and lede above overlapping product panels, one listing expenses with amounts, categories and approved or pending chips over Approve and Reject buttons, the other a running balance, beside an ink and watercolour figure reading a sheet of paper
Open Collective2023
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Safetag Brandmark Min

Safetag2026
  • Branding

Ask Siena

2026
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Expenses Suite

Three screens: a phone choosing which collective to invoice, a desktop dashboard of balances and recent activity, and an itemised invoice beside a magic-link confirmation
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Brand Application - Talk

A curved LED wall in a dark warehouse reading 'Financial advisory for the innovation economy' over a mountain photograph, with folding chairs set out in front
Scalepoint Advisors2026
  • Branding

Typography Styleguide

Type scale specimen: display, heading and body styles in Instrument Sans and Space Mono, each labelled with its size, line height and letter spacing
Parrotfish Investments2026
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Digital Expense

An itemised invoice for $5,000 of professional services, with collective, payee address and PayPal payout set out as three cards below
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Mobile Website

A phone lying on grey concrete in slatted daylight, showing the site's hero over a dark marbled image
Scalepoint Advisors2026
  • Web Design

Financial Dashboard

A dashboard of balance, received and spent totals above a recent-activity feed, beside the same feed on a phone
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Desktop Website

A laptop on dark upholstery showing a capabilities page — fractional CFO, CFO coaching, capital markets, business development — over a photograph of rock and orange foliage
Scalepoint Advisors2026
  • Web Design

Stationery & Letterheads

A letterhead and a folder printed with an orange and navy abstract, leaning against a concrete block in a dark studio
Scalepoint Advisors2026
  • Branding

Cover

A collage of product surfaces — a community card, a paid invoice row, the expense stepper and a phone mid-submission — arranged around the Open Collective wordmark
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Contribution Flow (Check out)

A fundraising page for EHF Scholarships: photo, description and a founder's quote on the left; a $30,000 goal with progress bar, Contribute button and recent donors on the right
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Download CSV - Mobile

Two phone screens for exporting transactions: chips listing the fields already selected, and a checklist of the ones available, both reporting 71,954 rows
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Visual Identity

Brand board on navy: Satoshi and Bricolage Grotesque specimens, pale blue, deep blue and orange swatches, the logo set over a rock landscape, and a numbered list of sectors
Scalepoint Advisors2026
  • Branding

Visual Identity

A rounded white tile carrying a muffin icon, knocked out of a dense cyan field of ASCII-like marks on navy
Moffin2026
  • Branding

Cover 2

A second collage: the dashboard top left, a paid invoice row, two illustrated explainer cards, the wordmark, and a tilted phone starting an expense
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Secure Link Modal

A line drawing of four birds singing beneath a watercolour smear, above the message 'Your magic link is on its way' and the address it was sent to
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Branding - Typeface Selection

A Space Grotesk specimen in white on blue: the full character set, a note on its Space Mono origins, and the line choosing it as the base of the logo
Safetag2026
  • Branding

Combined Brandmark

The wordmark beside its icon, a figure behind a tag, shown as a blue-on-white and white-on-blue pair
Safetag2026
  • Branding

Bento Grid

A grid of interface pieces: platform tip selector, date range, contribution summary, image cropper, profile switcher, expense stepper and invoice
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Brand Guidelines - Color

A colour specification card: a solid blue field labelled with its hex, CMYK, RGB and Pantone values, above five tint bars stepped 80, 70, 50, 25 and 10 per cent
Safetag2026
  • Branding

3D Brand Application

Chips
2026
  • Web Design

Branding & Creative Direction

The painted open-ring mark above a loose ink and wash drawing of three small birds, blue, pink and yellow, huddled together with their eyes closed
Open Collective2026
  • Branding

Platform Buttons

A design system spec card for a primary button: three buttons showing the resting, hover and focus states, above swatches naming the background, hover and label colours as blue tints 700, 600 and white
Open Collective2026
  • Product Design

Fiscal Hosting Visual

A marketing card: an ink-drawn bird in sunglasses sheltering under an open umbrella on a blue watercolour puddle, above a heading, a short explanatory paragraph and a Learn more link
Open Collective2026
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Product Visualization

2026
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Icon Design

An icon on a pale card: an open padlock whose body is a checkerboard of blue and orange squares, its shackle swung clear to one side, captioned Vulnerability Scanning
Safetag2026
  • Branding
  • Product Design

Logo Animation

Safetag2026
  • Branding

Top Nav Bar

2026
  • Web Design

Short Logo Constraints

Two construction diagrams of a Pf monogram on a measurement grid: the mark alone with its clearspace marked minus 1X and 9X, and the same mark locked up above a single word inside a rounded tile
Parrotfish Investments2026
  • Branding

Landing Page

2026
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Moderation Product Visualization

2026
  • Web Design

Brand Conceptual Illustration

A cream sheet with a serif headline and two lines about an intelligence layer that learns and an agent layer that acts, above a wide grainy gradient band in blue, orange and red: document cards at the left, a circular lens holding a black S monogram at the centre, a figure in headphones at the right
2026
  • Branding

Brand Application

Three hoardings on a street wall beneath an overpass: a wide cream panel reading 'Fuel Your Business Growth with Fast, Flexible Capital', then a navy and a white panel carrying portraits masked into a hexagonal starburst mark
2025
  • Branding

Brand Mark Construction

Moffin2025
  • Branding

Stickers

A sheet of sticker designs on near-black: rounded cards in cyan, mint, pink, cream and navy, each pairing a squared cupcake mark with a wordmark, a monospaced blurb, a grid of small marks or an ASCII-rendered portrait, plus tabs reading Score 9.9 out of 10 and Know your customer with Know struck through
Moffin2025
  • Branding

Hero Graphic Low

2025
  • Web Design

Web Mobile

A phone standing on a grey rock outcrop against near-black, its screen a numbered step about reaching many data sources through one platform, over a grid of provider logos ringing a purple app mark, the address bar reading moffin.com
2025
  • Web Design

Visual Identity

A white rounded tile carrying a cupcake mark, centred on a field of mint ASCII characters that build a portrait out of arrows, hashes and slashes on dark green
Moffin2025
  • Branding

Brandmark Motion

2025
  • Branding

WebGL Shader

Moffin Problem
Moffin2025
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Visual Identity

2025
  • Branding

Web Mobile

2025
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Website

2025
  • Branding
  • Web Design

ASCII Shader

Unicorn Studio scene
2025
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Web Design

Parrotfish Investments2025
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Brand Display

2024
  • Branding

Website

Parrotfish Investments2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Motion Branding

Scalepoint Advisors2024
  • Branding

Main Brandmark

A wordmark in dark navy on white, its central letter drawn as a looping cyan-to-teal script glyph, with a smaller second word set beneath the tail, framed above and below by drifting bands of tilted blue squares
Parrotfish Investments2024
  • Branding

Brandmark Short

A monogram of a capital P and a looping script f in dark navy, over a heavily blurred meeting-room photograph, with drifting bands of tilted blue squares in two opposite corners
Parrotfish Investments2024
  • Branding

Oboarding Toolbar

OSC2024
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Brand Visual Pattern

OSC2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Brand Display

A nine-tile brand board on black: the wordmark plain and again on a clearspace grid, a statistics panel over a blurred cityscape, tablet and phone screen mockups, the monogram over a night skyline edged with a dotted halftone, a device trio, and a type specimen sheet of heading and body specs
Parrotfish Investments2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Screensaver

OSC2024
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Stationery

Two letterhead layouts on black, one portrait and one landscape, each with a serif wordmark, a rising arrow glyph and a faint layout grid above a footer of partner names and offices, layered over a card printed with an abstract aerial landscape in orange, cream and navy
Scalepoint Advisors2024
  • Branding

Contribution Summary

A rounded card beneath a watercolour header of pink into blue scattered with white firework bursts and a dollar coin badge, listing $150.00 USD to Astropy and $15.00 to Open Collective over a ruled $165.00 total, with Tweet it and Share it buttons and a 140-character message box below
2023
  • Branding
  • Product Design

Onboarding UX

A six-step flow in two rows, each step a sketched wireframe of a dashboard or form joined by arrows — personal dashboard, create collective, create project, set up project, turn on fundraising, set a goal — captioned in blue and green handwriting
2023
  • Product Design

Admin Dashboard

A browser window on a collective's overview: a left rail of admin sections, portfolio, received, spent and contribution totals each with its period change, and a recent-activity update beside a panel of account balances
2023
  • Product Design

Transaction Info 1

A modal panel on a pale blue wash of label and value rows: a hash-masked identifier with a Copy link, an October 2023 timestamp, Debit as both type and chart of accounts, $1,400.00 USD in a select, an expense invoice, the Babel collective against Open Source Collective, Stripe as processor and Credit card as method
2023
  • Product Design

Transaction Info 2

A panel on a pale wash detailing an October 2023 employee expense invoice: an attachments chip, then paid-to, paid-by, approved-by and submitted-by rows each carrying an avatar and a timestamp, and a contribution section giving a recurring monthly contribution and its attachments
2023
  • Product Design

Brandmark

An open ring hand-painted in pale blue with a mottled, papery texture, the right side of its arc broken away into a separate crescent
Open Collective2022
  • Branding

Color Contrast Guidelines

Three contrast specimens pairing a neutral swatch with white — 10.35:1, 4:76:1 and 2.56:1 — each listing its large and small text rating and annotated ideal minimum, ok but could be better, and don't
2022
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Export CSV Mobil

Two phone screens of an export sheet: one listing the selected fields as chips under a saved preset, the other naming a new set above a checklist of available fields, both footed by a row count and an Export CSV button
2022
  • Product Design

Under Construction

A holding page: three ink-drawn birds, one asleep, one painting a pink watercolour cloud and one sweeping a grey smudge, above a heading, a short note and three links
Open Collective2022
  • Branding
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Onboarding Modal

Three numbered onboarding steps — talk to a consultant, send your data, review and launch — under a watercolour illustration of hands at a tablet
Boonli2020
  • Product Design
  • Web Design

Digital Illustration

Watercolour illustration of a payments system: a monogram ringed by card, bank, cash and cheque icons, with two hands shaking below
Boonli2020
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Boonli.com Web Design

The homepage hero, 'One-Stop Shopping for All Your School Services', at desktop, tablet and phone widths over a painted magenta wash
Boonli2020
  • Web Design

Brand Guidelines UX

A portrait divider page in solid blue: a four-line title set in monospace above a rule and a two-line subtitle, a small section label at the lower right, a white person pictogram in the corner, and a yellow block offset behind the page edge
Safetag2020
  • Branding

Icon Design

An icon on a pale card: an orange exclamation mark set inside heavy blue square brackets, captioned Threat Assessment
Safetag2020
  • Branding
  • Product Design

Icon Design

An icon on a pale card: two figures reduced to a blue dot and arc each, their shoulders merging into a shared orange curve above a single orange dot, captioned Interpersonal
Safetag2020
  • Branding
  • Product Design

Menu Mobile

An open mobile navigation drawer: icon-led entries grouped under Solutions and Product, each with a one-line description, then Company and Social link columns, a split Log in and Support bar, and a crimson Request Demo button over a watercolour brushstroke
Boonli2020
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Web Illustration

A watercolour illustration of an adult and a child sitting together over a tablet, layered with two interface panels: a tilted card offering size choices for a ticked lunch item, and a calendar whose dates carry small line-drawn sandwich, taco and drink icons
Boonli2020
  • Branding
  • Web Design

Brand Application

Four first names stacked in blue inside a keyline square, with a solid blue tab notched into its top-right corner carrying a white person pictogram
Safetag2020
  • Branding

Web Design

A web page section: a headline and lede above four event photographs masked into leaf and arc shapes drawn from the brandmark, showing a workshop table, a speaker addressing a seated audience, a person at a flip chart and a large group waving, over a pale dot grid with a purple About us button beneath
OSC2020
  • Web Design

Stickerboard

A sticker sheet: nine watercolour vignettes on white sticker shapes ringing a central wordmark, among them hands tapping a weekly meal calendar on a tablet, a cook with a trolley of trays, a school building under a cloche, trays of packed lunches, a parent and child, and hands passing a lunch across
Boonli2020
  • Branding

Branding

A geometric monogram in deep purple on a pale lilac square, the words Open Source Collective stacked beneath it, scattered on white among rings, arcs and small squares in purple, mint, cyan and violet
OSC2019
  • Branding

Brandmark

A geometric monogram in deep purple on a translucent panel over a mint to lilac gradient, with the words Open Source Collective stacked beneath it
OSC2019
  • Branding

Poster

A portrait poster split vertically: a cyan to violet gradient panel carrying a white headline and the stacked logo lockup, beside an overhead photograph of pedestrians on a wide zebra crossing overlaid with translucent brand circles
OSC2019
  • Branding
ProjectVerticalsSubprojectsYears
TafkaBranding, Web Design2 subprojects2017–2019
Open CollectiveBranding, Product Design, Web Design4 subprojects2019–2024
Community & PublicationsCommunity4 subprojects2016–present
Independent practiceBranding, Product Design, Web Design7 subprojects2024–present
Memo Esparza presenting at a wall of workshop notes

Profile.

Design is not a profession or a discipline it is the sensibility of being able to materialize different futures, and that's what it is in my life. Over nine years I have launched digital products, built design organizations, owned product surfaces where money and transparency meet, and shaped how companies stand out.

I always start with strategy, asking the right questions and know the people behind each project before visualizing anything.
I value uniqueness, purposefulness, high quality standards, hard challenges, deep conversations, and a light-hearted approach to life.

Above all, I consider design valuable for the impact it has on people and communities, which is why my main drive is to create positive impact for people with design.

Info.

Disciplines.
  • Product design
  • Design systems
  • Brand identity
  • Design leadership
  • Web design and art direction
  • Information architecture
  • Creative direction
Scale.
  • In-house design team built from 1 to 10
  • Design system maintained and scaled with dozens of open source contributors across many cultural backgrounds
  • $40M a year moving through Open Collective, roughly $135M over tenure. 15,000 collectives, 200,000 people, 40+ countries
  • Sustain Open Source Design Podcast, 26 episodes across 3 years
Roles.
  • Co-founder, Renderia (2016)
  • Co-founder and owner, Tafka (2017 to 2019)
  • Head of Design, Open Collective (2019 to 2024)
  • Independent practice (2024 to present)
Organizations & Collaborators.
  • Google, Mozilla, MIT Bootcamps, Ford Foundation, Varkey Foundation, Prototype Fund, Late Checkout Agency.
Industries.
  • Fintech, open-source, nonprofits, AI, Ecommerce, education, customer products, professional services

Designing with and for others to create a positive impact.